It's time to spill the beans about coffee

November 11, 2007|By John Kass

Spiros, the morning grill guy at the Billy Goat Tavern, where I often have my coffee and read the newspapers, is a good fellow, as is Nonda, his colleague.

They're good men. They know soccer. They make excellent bacon-egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches. And they pour a good, cheap cup of coffee, which costs only 50 cents, (55 cents with tax), a great deal compared to ridiculous coffee prices elsewhere.

But there's one thing they won't do. They won't cross the line -- as many Americans have done lately -- into coffee porn.

"Don't joke around. Are you joking around?" asked Spiros, grabbing a spatula and pretending to scramble some eggs.

Spiros, does your coffee have a trace of tobacco, a smooth oaky finish?

"If you put your cigarette in there, but don't do that, it's good coffee. The best. What are you talking about? It's 50 cents, with tax 55 cents. You want bacon-egg-and-cheese?"

Then Spiros muttered something under his breath. Loosely translated, it means: "Crazy Americans love their coffee in unnatural ways."

He's right. It's more than unnatural. It's coffee porn. America is afflicted with it and most of you don't even know.

If you doubt me, or doubt Spiros, don't doubt your own eyes: Grab a newspaper or a magazine, and read a coffee review and decide for yourself if it skirts the edge of propriety. Or visit a high-end gourmet coffee store and read the little cards. Try not to blush.

"Strong oaky finish" and "bold, nutty, chewy flavor," and so on, or "strong, with a nice smoky aroma and a chew that holds up through the smooth finish," according to Tribune review about a cup of coffee that sells for $1.95. "Smoky initial aroma turns fruity and nutty with half-and-half but still keeps a strong finish," said another.

"Intense and bitter on first sniff," said another. "Aroma of salami pre-half-and-half, then tastefully inoffensive and insipid with a smooth finish," said another.

Salami? No wonder Spiros was afraid. Bring up salami and coffee, and you better have rye bread.

I'm not criticizing my paper. We're just giving the coffee addicts what they want, and what they want is to think about coffee in a D.H. Lawrence sort of way.

Read any coffee story out loud, to yourself, from any news organization, and chances are it'll sound like Ravel's "Bolero."

The poor reporter who reviewed dozens of coffees did so simply to meet the insatiable demands readers have for porno-coffee. And the editors ran the story, knowing that porno-coffee drinkers are lusting to read about the "pleasantly burnt finish" and so on.

It's even worse in those super gourmet coffee places. I've tried to go into a few of the super gourmet coffee cafes -- Starbucks is so bourgeois -- but as many of you know, I'm easily intimidated.

When I go for coffee, I want a cup of coffee. What I don't need is some kid wearing a sweater and his shirt tails sticking out because it's the style, pointing to a list of coffees, each of which are described sensually, in language that would have caused my mom to wash my mouth out with soap.

It's coffee, dang it. Wake up, America.

A few months ago, I told you about how Americans have become so easily led, that we'll pay over $400 a pound for coffee beans that were digested through a civet cat, a creature with pudgy palms and fingers.

The cat poop coffee -- which some thought was pure fantasy, but it's true -- is the most disgusting example of American excess that can be found. Coffee from a cat's behind may be tasty indeed, but I dare you to ask Spiros or Nonda to make some.

And since I'm on the subject of coffee, what about the coffeemakers? People are spending hundreds of dollars for German coffeemakers. Are they out of their minds?

If anyone pays that much for a coffeemaker -- or drinks coffee tenderized through the digestive canals of a cat -- they should forever be prohibited from voting on anything.

Instead, try a percolator, if you can find one. Young people who let their shirts hang out when they're wearing a suit won't know about percolators, but that's OK. They don't know that they will look like fools in family photographs some day, and their children will think they were embarrassingly drunk, lumbering out of the washroom, with their shirttails hanging.

A percolator makes a great cup of coffee. You put the coffee in, add water, it perks, a light comes on, and says it's ready. That's when you drink it.

My family's been in the restaurant business for centuries. So I'm immune to the spells of coffee marketers. Here's how coffee works:

If you don't drink coffee within the first 20 minutes it's been made, you couldn't tell the difference between civet, Maxwell House and Ethiopian Harrar.

So let's get back to our American virtues. A modest percolator in every home, where coffee is coffee; not salami, not oak, just coffee.